The Economist - USA (2022-03-12)

54 Business  TheEconomistMarch12th 2022

Thefutureoftheoffice

Work life in balance

A

fter severalfalse starts, office work­

ers  are  returning  to  their  desks—for

good  this  time,  employers  hope.  As  co­

vid­19  restrictions  are  scaled  back,  people

must again get used to crowds (see Bartle­

by). Financial giants such Wells Fargo have

joined Wall Street titans such as JPMorgan

Chase  and  Morgan  Stanley  in  urging  peo­

ple  back  to  the  office.  The  great  return  is

afoot  in  big  tech,  too.  Meta  and  Microsoft

are  asking  employees  to  return  by  late

March.  Most  big  Silicon  Valley  campuses

will  be  fuller  from  April.  Many  bosses

share  the  sentiment  of  James  Gorman,

Morgan  Stanley’s  chief  executive:  if  you

can eat out, you can come to the office. 

For purveyors of remote­working tech,

the gradual unwinding of the grand work­

from­home experiment is already proving

rough.  Slack,  a  corporate­chat  app  owned

by  Salesforce,  a  software  giant,  projects

slowing  sales  growth  to  20%  in  the  next

quarter,  year  on  year,  down  from  50%  at

the  height  of  the  pandemic.  In  February

Zoom  reported  that  growth  had  slowed

globally, with revenues in Europe, the Mid­

dle East and Africa down by 9%, compared

with  a  year  earlier,  and  the  number  of  its

video­conferencing  clients  had  declined

relative to the previous quarter. Its market

value has sunk as a result (see chart). 

The return to the office will be no picnic

for employers, either. Most are scrambling

to  figure  out  what  the  future  of  work  will

look  like.  For  many,  the  most  pressing

question is: how hybrid will that future be?

In  the  short  run,  almost  certainly  pretty

hybrid.  Apple  is  bringing  staff  back  to  the

office one day a week to start. By May 23rd,

the  iPhone­maker  will  require  them  to

come in three days a week. Citigroup, hsbc

and  Standard  Chartered  let  their  bankers

work from home on some days. 

That seems only natural. Combining of­

fice and home toil appeared to do wonders

for work­life balance. And on the face of it,

the past two years have shown that people

can work well from anywhere, says Despi­

na  Katsikakis  of  Cushman  &  Wakefield,  a

property  consultancy.  Productivity,  col­

laboration and focus seem to have held up. 

The problem, says Ms Katsikakis, is that

“all of the other elements are suffering.” In

one global survey of more than 600 compa­

ny  leaders  and  human­resources  profes­

sionals,  for  example,  more  than  80%  re­

sponded  that  hybrid  set­ups  were  emo­

tionally  exhausting  for  employees.  Many

ringing endorsements of it made by bosses

and workers in mid­2021 turned into deep

reservations  just  a  few  months  later.  As

more people return to the office, concerns

about  hybridisation  are  likely  to  become

ever more acute. Rather than being the best

of both worlds, is hybrid work really a rot­

ten compromise?

The  hybrid  workplace  is  failing  to  live

up to expectations in a number of ways. For

one  thing,  it  is  no  substitute  for  the  buzz

and the chatter of the pre­pandemic office.

Many  people  hanker  after  the  socialising,

camaraderie  and  shared  experience,  even

if  getting  used  to  it  again  may  take  time.

Even  small  amounts  of  remote  work  can

have a big impact on the frequency of face­

to­face interactions in the office. By one es­

timate,spendinganaverageofthreedays

eachweekintheofficecanlimitencoun­

tersbetweenanytwoworkersby64%com­

paredwithpre­pandemicnorms.Thegap

widensto84%inpotentialinteractionsfor

thoseintheofficetwodaysa week.

Asofficesfillup,workerswhoturnup

inpersonmaythereforeforgecloserbonds

with their teams and company leaders

than remote ones. Proximity bias—the

subconscioustendency tovalue andre­

wardphysicalpresence—maythendisad­

vantagewomen,minoritiesandparentsof

youngchildren,whoarekeeneronhome

workingthanothergroups.

Arelateddrawbackisthedeclineinca­

sualencountersoutsideanemployee’sin­

ner circle.Inthe1970sThomasAllen,a

management scholar, discovered that

communication between office workers

dropped offexponentiallywith distance

between their desks; those on separate

floorsorinseparatebuildingsalmostnev­

erspoke.A studyofmorethan60,000em­

ployeesatMicrosoft,a techgiant,inthe

firsthalfof 2020 showedthatvirtualwork­

ers,too,werelesslikelytoconnectwith

peopletheywerenotalreadycloseto.

Before  the  pandemic  many  companies

were  going  to  great  lengths  to  overcome

the “Allen curve” and engineer serendipity.

Google,  which  credits  spontaneous  chats

for products such as Gmail and Street View,

designed its Silicon Valley headquarters to

ensure  that  any  one  Googler  could  reach

any other by walking no more than two and

a  half  minutes.  Bathrooms  at  the  head­

quarters for Pixar, an animation studio co­

founded  by  Steve  Jobs,  Apple’s  late  boss,

were  located  in  the  central  atrium  so  that

people  from  different  teams  would  cross

paths as they heeded nature’s call.

Some managers have tried to boost con­

nections in the hybrid world by scheduling

more  virtual  meetings,  sending  more

emails or firing off more instant messages.

Hybrid work was meant to be the best ofbothworlds.Isit?

The architecture of workplace interaction 

Zooming in and out

Zoom Video Communications

Market capitalisation, $bn

Sources:RefinitivDatastream;WHO

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Delta Omicron

WHOdeclares

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concern designated